The ultimate goal of any industrial operations plan is to maintain efficiency without sacrificing safety or quality. This is why it’s essential to integrate industrial preventative maintenance into your facility’s workflow so that everyday operations are safe and efficient for the long term.
Why Preventative Maintenance is Essential to an Efficient Workflow
Proper industrial machine maintenance is important for protecting a facility from emergency breakdowns. Unexpected breakdowns of critical equipment can severely slow or halt production, extend lead times, and impact the bottom line. Machines that are not serviced properly are more likely to break down faster and unexpectedly.
Not only does incorporating industrial preventative maintenance directly into your facility’s workflows reduce the risk of equipment failures and unexpected downtime, but it also:
- Cuts costs by extending the life of your equipment
- Saves on energy and resources
- Improves safety for machine operators
- Keeps equipment within regulatory compliance
- Allows for more predictable downtime for cleaning and maintenance, rather than waiting for a last-minute failure to shut down operations
Eight Steps for Disruption-Free Preventative Maintenance
1. Identify and Prioritize Critical Assets
When creating a maintenance workflow, identify the industrial equipment most critical to maintaining efficient operations. These machines should take priority over other, less vital assets and should come first when planning maintenance schedules. Create a detailed inventory of all industrial equipment and perform a criticality analysis to find your most vital machinery in every workflow.
2. Develop a Maintenance Schedule
Create a maintenance schedule based on manufacturer and installer recommendations, taking into account your own needs and workflows. Equipment manuals usually include detailed maintenance information and schedules, giving you an excellent starting point for knowing when maintenance is required and what level of maintenance is needed for each milestone.
Keep in mind that maintenance schedules should vary based on the use case, so it’s also important to consult the mechanical engineers who fabricate and install your industrial equipment on their recommended maintenance and cleaning schedules.
3. Perform Preventative Inspections
Regularly inspect machinery according to (and more frequently than) maintenance schedules, identifying signs of wear and tear or damage that could lead to future issues and failures. Inspections are important for catching problem areas before they start to impact workflows, and keeping your equipment reliable and safe. These inspections may be performed by trained staff or by professional industrial maintenance technicians.
4. Incorporate Safety Compliance Checklists
As part of your everyday operations, develop safety compliance checklists to ensure every component of your industrial equipment is safe and functioning properly. This list should include all regulatory compliance pieces for each machine and additional checks to ensure a safe working environment.
5. Maintain Records
It’s easy for maintenance to fall through the cracks without proper record-keeping. Keep a detailed log of all maintenance and inspections performed, which can be vital for any compliance or warranty claims and tracking equipment performance. These records are also useful for any technicians who may make repairs or perform maintenance in the future. To enhance the efficiency and quality of records, use record-keeping software or even automation to ensure everything is tracked in detail.
6. Train Staff on Best Practices
Educate and train any employees who will interact with industrial equipment on proper use, cleaning, maintenance, and inspection methods. Even if they won’t directly perform maintenance or inspections, machine operators may notice red flags that are missed during inspections and can report on those with proper training on what to look out for. Ensure that anyone performing maintenance or inspections on industrial equipment knows exactly what to do and what to look for, emphasizing the value of preventative maintenance for avoiding future headaches.
7. Delegate and Communicate
When delegating inspection and maintenance tasks, clearly and specifically assign tasks so nothing gets missed. This assignment should be outlined in each maintenance plan, either delegating it to a maintenance team or by assigning recurring responsibilities to individual employees.
Clear communication is key to any preventative maintenance plan. This includes communication between the maintenance team and other departments, between machine operators and management, and even between a business and its professional mechanical engineering firm! Aligning everyone on tasks, responsibilities, and expectations goes a long way toward optimizing productivity and avoiding miscommunications that can lead to future delays.
8. Have Experts on Call
A lot of industrial preventative maintenance and inspection can occur in-house, but there comes a time when it’s helpful to call in professionals. Professional mechanical engineers—especially those who originally fabricated and installed your industrial equipment—know your machinery inside and out, enabling them to better advise on how you can adjust your maintenance plan to better service your equipment. Call in the professionals if:
- You can’t identify the cause of an ongoing equipment issue
- You need to replace a part that requires professional installation
- You don’t have the proper tools or resources to perform a maintenance task
- Your equipment is showing signs of breakdown
Scheduled preventative maintenance is always the best option, but in emergencies, it’s also good to have an emergency maintenance team on call and ready to help.
Prepare for the Best with Mathews Mechanical
At Mathews Mechanical, our team provides 24/7 emergency service to customers across several industries. We address issues with industrial equipment, from conveyor belts and car stackers to dock doors and cranes. Through reliable machinery and timely repairs, we help our customers save time, serve customers, maintain profits, and retain staff.
Contact us today to learn more and schedule your first service appointment.
